


day 1: it's all looking up

by halfwheeze



Series: thirty ways to wreck a train [1]
Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: First Meeting, M/M, Pre-Slash, no editing so suffer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-11
Updated: 2018-03-11
Packaged: 2019-03-29 19:08:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13933404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halfwheeze/pseuds/halfwheeze
Summary: when a friend of a friend needs a ride home from the airport, shane steps up.





	day 1: it's all looking up

**Author's Note:**

> hi! this is the first of a 30-day series I'm trying out! I can't say that I'll be fantastic at it, but I'm gonna try!
> 
> Day one is first meetings, so here we go! Enjoy!

He doesn't even know when they're supposed to be meeting, or where, or how they're meant to find each other with no previous knowledge of exactly what the other looks like. He's exactly three minutes away from finding a piece of paper and a sharpie so he can write 'RYAN BERGARA' on a sign and just hold it up. He's picking up a friend of a friend from the airport, the most ridiculous of backup plans that he's ever been a part of. He wishes Jen had given him a better description than "shorter and tanner than you," being as both of those things described the vast majority of people. He's beginning to think that she only said it to joke around with him. 

The airport is crowded and makes him feel a little like he's in an international spy movie, like he's waiting for  _ the drop  _ and he’ll have to run out in a blaze of glory in t minus ten seconds. He gets distracted from that line of thought with a strange sight; he’s never seen someone come  _ off  _ a plane with a sign - he’s only ever seen them on people who are picking people up. It takes a while for the guy to get close enough for Shane to be able to read the sign, and when he can, he laughs: it reads  _ ‘SHANE MA-HOWEVER YOU SPELL THAT. _ ’ It must mean him, and he’s still laughing when he walks up to tap the guy on the shoulder, being as he’s turned to look around the rest of the terminal. 

“It’s M-A-D-E-J. Hi. I’m Shane,” he says, still interspersed with chuckles as he holds out a hand for Ryan Bergara to shake. Ryan grins and puts the sign (which seems to have crossed out options above the one he settled on) in an already open pocket to his one suitcase, freeing up his hand so he can shake Shane’s, and he’s really pretty. He’s so pretty. Like, Shane has seen pretty dudes because he has eyes and lives in California and shit, but  _ damn _ , this guy is pretty. It takes him a moment to realise Ryan is speaking, but he thinks he still catches all the important parts. 

“Ryan Bergara. Jen tell you where we’re going, or was she just as delightfully vague to you as she was to me?” Ryan asks, his pretty grin still settled on his pretty face and it makes his voice sound fond even though they don’t know each other and wow, Shane, can you find your chill? Cleanup on aisle two, it’s Shane Madej’s chill which has gone Missing In Action to the nearest grocery store. He grounds himself with the idea of a good first impression on a potential friend, and turns to where he and Ryan will need to walk. With where he’s standing in the terminal, Ryan will have already gotten all of his things, so it’s just the hike to his car that they need to make. 

“She actually didn’t tell me, no surprise. What side of town are you on?” Shane asks as they walk, keeping a respectable distance between them to kill the temptation of bumping their shoulders or something equally stupid. Ryan gives him the details of his address, which Shane quickly inputs into his phone’s Maps. There’s a companionable silence that comes over them after that, close in a way that Shane rarely is with anyone, let alone brand new strangers, friends of friends. This is usually where Shane gets irrefutably awkward, cracking jokes that are honestly admittedly bad, which just reminds him of every other white guy in his first improv class in college. 

Ryan’s suitcase trails behind them as they make their way to the south exit, taking the elevator to the seventh floor of the parking garage, which is high enough to make Shane feel a little sick. It’ll only be worse when he has to drive back down in the roundabout looking thing that he never remembers the name of. Finding his car is easy, if only because the parking garage is sparse on this level; he imagines it’s some sort of superstition or something. He always parks on floor seven, though. That could be read as superstitious as well, but it never felt that way in his head; it’s just always clear in seven. 

“So what do you do, Shane - okay, I know how to spell it now, but it’s pronounced  _ Madej _ , right?” Ryan asks once they make it into the elevator, one of the first people to pronounce it correctly on their first try in Shane’s life. Shane smiles over and down at the other man and just nods before looking back forward and center at the wall of the elevator. He presses the number belatedly, laughing at himself beneath his breath and decidedly not looking at Ryan to see if he thought it was funny too, and if he did, whether he had crow’s feet when he laughed. Clean up on aisle two indeed. 

“I do writing and videos and editing and so many sporadic things at Buzzfeed in Los Angeles,” he answers, as belated as pressing the number, and looks over at Ryan again. He’s still smiling, though now the other man looks a touch surprised; Shane guesses it’s because he works with Jen. 

“I start working at Buzzfeed Wednesday,” Ryan says, sounding a little bit breathless in a way that Shane wants to hear more often, maybe. A set of photographs that haven’t been taken yet flash before Shane’s eyes, ones where they’re friends for the rest of their working careers, ones where he shows up to work with coffee for two, ones where Ryan greets him with a kiss on the cheek, and ones where they’re together before the end of the year. He can imagine a great many things in the span of a second, and he really shouldn’t. He should throw all of these thoughts in the garbage. 

They talk for the rest of the trip, Ryan inputting his number in Shane’s phone when Shane hands it to him. They get along so well that Shane forgets that they aren’t already friends, that they haven’t known each other before today. He wonders, for a crazy moment, whether Jen was busy today at all. They get to Ryan’s apartment all too quickly, and Shane stops him before he gets out. 

“See you Wednesday, maybe?” Shane asks, and Ryan nods, grinning, before he gets out. Shane smiles to himself. He’ll see him again. 

**Author's Note:**

> Leave me a prompt @halfwheeze on tumblr, and I'll get to it when I can!


End file.
